I take the longest sheet in my possession to answer your short Letter,1 both because the answer is nearly due, and that we may the sooner have another, wherein perhaps more specific tidings will be granted us, and that long-looked-for ‘next time’ will actually
arrive. We have indeed, taking one thing with another, small right to complain of you as a Correspondent: only that your fidelity
and punctuality in one particular causes the greater desire of it in another, and the frustrated possibility of great enjoyment
awakens unthankfulness with little. Did you understand rightly with what feelings we open a sheet from you, it would not be
‘near six’ that you would sit down to write, but at some much more deliberate hour.

Let me satisfy you first touching Mary. She is at Scotsbrig; her husband2 officiating there as farm-labourer, instead of John Lockhart, whom they found means to discharge. It is our Mother's doing;
warmly opposed by sister Jean, and by all here; partly indifferent to the other parties: but our Mother turned a deaf ear to all reasoning on the subject,
or rather listened to it, and then went and did otherwise. I left her, on the Friday after I wrote to you last, apparently
convinced and quieted: but next night she took to ‘wandering about the house’; had Jemmy despatched to Moffat on Sunday, and
next day back with a horse-and-cart, which landed them both bag and baggage at Scotsbrig door. There is a talk there about
fitting up some of the office-houses as a separate dwelling for them: but we think here that nothing of that sort will actually
be done soon; and in the meanwhile we must even leave them in that ungainly position; regretting to see all our sagacious
contrivances and heroic determinations as good as thrown away. I am vexed at my mother, yet it is only her weakness of purpose,
or perhaps rather undue strength of affection, that we can blame. I have not written to her yet, and shall not soon I fear
muster heart to visit Scotsbrig under these circumstances; which however there is no altering.— Jemmy who was here since,
with Robert Clow, reports that the rest of the household are well; as indeed we heard again on Monday last, when Alick's herdboy was down there—bringing him a cartwheel, and us a supply of oatmeal and chickens.

Alick3 has his wife here, calls her ‘my love,’ sometimes even ‘my angel’ with his own peculiar accent, and seems to get on perfectly
well. Jenny herself is the naivest of women, a good figure, and at working a very Penelope. On the whole, here in our moorland
Patmos we are not without cause to be grateful: this very night, we have fine black frost, a vehement fire is blazing (with
peats logs and large coals) at my left hand (for it is in the Drawing-room that we abide for these few days), and on the opposite
side thereof sits my wife sewing; I owe no man almost anything, and have the prospect of being allowed to live unmolested
in God's Earth a little longer, there to till and sow according to ability that richest of all fields Future Time: Mein Ackerist die Zeit [Time is my seed-field].4 ‘What wanteth man that I have not / Within my own Four walls?’5

To give you a few more particulars. We have only one servant this winter: ‘Betty’, an oldish coughing woman, but seemingly
a ‘chosen one’ of her sex, so quiet is she, so orderly, and takes such charge of Master and Missus, of cow, pig and pony. The place
is all dry and gravelly, swept and garnished, even to Cobbett's taste, about doors;6 windtight, watertight, warm and smokeless within. The ‘big beast’ is labouring for her bread at Templand this winter: but
Harry runs in the Gig (which I myself can now trim and harness) like a very lion, and I give him ‘swine-meal,’ which is his
plumpudding and calepash and calepee,7 nightly by deputy, and on those great Gig-occasions for two days previously ‘with my own hand.’8 We were at Templand but on Wednesday last; and with lamps burning (halfpenny tallow candles!) overtook MacKnight, scarcely
past ‘the Milton,’ and snatched our Letters from him.— ‘By the bye,’ I ought here to admit that your Newspaper has been a day too late, the last two times; owing to no neglect of mine, but
to the mischance that none went hence to Church, and that I had no man to send down; which mischance however I have taken the best measures I could to guard against hencefort[h]. Again, by another bye, I may say that we are not tired of the Examiner, which we think the cleverest of all Radicals; but will nevertheless cheerfully fall in with any new arrangement you like better: the Spectator we generally see, about midweek, thro' Frazer; it is better than it was, and immeasurably copious, yet still stupid enough.
Besides is it not twice as dear as the Examiner, or any other single Paper? But as I said, whatever way will please you better. On the whole you are a true blessing to us for Newspapers; never once a failure, and ever and
anon some supernumerary, which were it weeks old is alw[a]ys greedily devoured by us. We get no talk here, and are quite insatiable in the Newspaper way. William Graham, who rode with
me to Ecclefechan that night the Parcel went off, expressed a similar gratitude towards you; indeed he seemed gladder of those
old Papers than if you had given him as many guineas: your Letter also was very precious to him; and if he had not answered
it, sad secret cares, as I guessed, were the only reason. Poor Graham is on no bed of roses, so far as matters economic go:
but he does not open himself, and I have not the face to break in upon his citadel, having no comfort to give if I were there. And now adding only that Waugh9 is still a laggard, and applied to me lately for ‘a loan of ten pounds’ (umsonst! umsonst! [in vain! in vain!]) and directions how to study German, I quit the province of news and private gossip: after which paullo majora canamus [Let us sing in a somewhat loftier strain].10

I have yet done nothing in regard to your Homöpathie,11 am most ready to do anything, but can scarcely advise what. Will you have me write to the man,12 offering such an Article from you, to see what he says? If so, tell me, and I will do it. I would most probably have stirred
that way in the matter already; only that I have not yet heard anything about his proceedings in regard to that History, and meant to regulate my future conduct towards him partly by his conduct therein. He is a coarse hog of a man, but not
ill-meaning perhaps, and for the present may be useful. It is possible every week that I may hear something from him: but
do you write on the supposition of my not having heard, and then direct me what to do. If you have determined on trying the Article, or feel at least that you could do it agreeably, then mention to me what length &c you think of, what Books you would specially require, and any other descriptive
particular: I will send off a letter to Cochrane, and bid him write direct to you, that no time be lost.— What of your Medical
History? I see your Article13 advertised in last Fraser, but nothing of mine, so that I am still far in your debt. They may print up what they have got, before I send more. Poor
W.14 I doubt has but a secondary finger in the pie; otherwise I know he is heartily good to me. Hang them! I have a Book in me that will cause ears to tingle; and one day out it must and will issue. Jack too has another talent, other talents:
in the valley of the shadow of Magazine Editors we shall not always linger. Courage! Not Hope, for she was always a liar,
but Courage! Courage!— For myself I am to write Napier a shortish Paper on Taylor's Survey of German Poetry, which work I expect on Wednesday: this will occupy for three weeks complete.15 I have translated Saint-Simon's Nouveau Christianisme,16 a heterodox Pamphlet (about 40 Review pages), which I mean soon to send you. I have prefixed a very short introduction; and you may try whether any pamphlet-printing Bookseller (some Socinian, or Anti-Church,
or quite indifferent character) will give you the matter of five pounds for the copyright thereof, or will give nothing whatever,
which also will be a decision. It contains several strange ideas, not without a large spice of truth; is ill-written, but
easily read, and deserves a reading. Tell me whether you think it will be worth risking 6 shillings on, and in the affirmative,
off!— Alas! the Paper too is done, and we were not half fertig!Gott mit Dir! [finished! God be with you!].

T. Carlyle

Never fight hurrying those foolish Proof-sheets: they will do, any time in January; it is the other Books I care most for. If you can ascertain where the sheets are, and that they are, no more for the present is wanted.— Our Mother had given Alick orders to tell me that I was to send you my thick
socks, till she found time to make two other pairs: Alick neglected, so they are still here, but shall come with Saint-Simon.

Jeffrey has not written since his advancement; indeed I was two Letters in his debt till only a week ago, so that there is
not time yet. We want to hear what he will say. In the House, I doubt he will NOT prosper, his health is too weak, and even his voice.17

The Scotch Tories you see have all turned tail, and over all the North there is one cry: Reform! Unhappy souls! that they
should not even have attained thus much, which is but the beginning! I am for a radical inward Reform.

I have bought me a broad-crowned Highland Cap, which is very warm; and got the old Russia Leather Boots clogged! They are dreadfully heavy (having been wrong done), but quite water-tight.—

1. Dated 15 Nov. About a page and a half of the whole letter has been preserved. John said: “I feel like you that the steps I have hitherto
taken in London are the wisest that could have been taken in such circumstances. I have full employment at present & can wait
with due patience for practice till it comes. Did I tell you in my last letter, that I have set about studying the subject
of ‘Diet and Regimen’? It includes nearly the whole of medicine, &, by professing to master it, I comply with the fashion
here which demands a division of labour in medicine as well as other things. I have got German books on the subject about
me, as well as many English & my mornings are spent in reading them. … I saw C. Buller to-day & found him unwell. He could
not sit up easily having a blister on so that I did not like to ask him for a frank. Arthur is also here & Mr. and Mrs Buller
at Mannheim—discontented with Germany. I go tomorrow to take a mutton chop with [Charles] & to hear the debate on Parliamentary reform. Both are very kind to me.”

2. Mary had recently married James Austin. They had resided at Scotsbrig since 22 Nov.

3. Who had also married recently. His wife had been Janet Clow (1809–91).

Goethes Werke(Weimar, 1888), VI, 121. Carlyle changed the punctuation and replaced “Erbtheil” and “Besitz” with “Vermächtniss”; “Erbtheil” has a legalistic connotation which he may have wished to avoid. He may also have had in mind Goethe's seven-stanza poem
“Vermächtniss,” first published in 1829 as a supplement to the second book of the revised and enlarged Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, which he would have read at the end of vol. XXII of the collected edition of Goethe's works (Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand).

5. See Carlyle's poem “My Own Four Walls” published in A. Carlyle, LL, II, 355–56, and cf. TC to ADBM, 25 Dec. 1826. Two of the seven stanzas read:

A home and wife I too have got,
A hearth to blaze whate'er befalls!
What need a man that I have not
Within my own four walls? …

The moorland house, tho' rude it be,
May stand the brunt, when prouder falls,
'Twill screen my wife, my Books and me,
All in my own four walls.

6. See Cobbett, Cottage Economy (London, 1822), p. 101, in which he is explicit about the need for neatness around the dwelling, and especially that “every act that tends
to neatness … tends to the creating of a mass of manure [as the pile of debris swept together becomes composted].”

7. “Calipash” and “calipee”: the first being that part of the turtle next to the upper shield—a greenish gelatinous substance;
the second being that part of the turtle near the lower shield—a yellowish gelatinous substance.

11. John apparently never wrote on the topic, but he may have had in mind something similar to the article (attributed to Sir
Daniel Sandford) in the Edinburgh Review, L (Jan. 1830), 504–27, on the Homopathic concept (about “sameness of feeling”) as propounded by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann.
His theories were criticized by many contemporaries, including Thomas Hood in his “Ode to Doctor Hahnemann, the Homœpathist”
(1837).

15. In his letter of 9 Dec. Napier rejected Carlyle's proposal to write a long article on Moore's life of Byron because he said that Jeffrey had promised
to do so. If Jeffrey could not because of his duties as Lord Advocate, he must assign it to one of two other men who wanted
to write it, and the book became in fact the subject of Macaulay's brilliant essay in the June issue. After turning down Carlyle's other proposal—to write an article on Napoleon—he suggested that he write a review of
the Historic Survey of German Poetry, Interspersed with Various Translations, 3 vols. (1828–30), by William Taylor of Norwich (1765–1836). This article appeared in the Edinburgh Review, LIII (March 1831), and was republished in Works, XXVII, 333–70.

17. The Tory ministry went out, and Wellington resigned on Nov. 16. A new ministry was formed, under Lord Grey, on Nov. 19, of Whigs and Tories who accepted the need for Parliamentary reform. A consequence of this was that Jeffrey was appointed
Lord Advocate, with administrative responsibility for Scotland, previously dominated by the Tories. About this time Carlyle
comments in the Two Note Books, pp. 178–79: “The Whigs in office, and Baron Brougham Lord Chancellor! Hay-stacks and corn-stacks burning over all the South
and Middle of England! Where will it end? Revolution on the back of Revolution for a century yet? Religion, the cement of Society, is not here: we can have no permanent beneficent arrangement of affairs.”

21. About 29 Dec. Carlyle wrote in his journal: “Jack writes miserably hurried letters: I fear he is unhappy; there is no doubt he is a little
unwise; yet I think him gathering wisdom” (Two Note Books, p. 182).